


In Your Arms I'll Stay

by Hepzheba



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Attempt at Humor, F/F, Fluff, Getting to Know Each Other, Humor, M/M, Selfies, Texting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-14
Updated: 2015-02-14
Packaged: 2018-03-12 09:01:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3350930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hepzheba/pseuds/Hepzheba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lydia won't stop texting her girlfriend, Cora, and Stiles won't stop complainig. So Lydia sends him the number to Cora's brother so they can complain together. They don't do much complaining though.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Your Arms I'll Stay

**Author's Note:**

> For rplague on tumblr. Happy Valentines Day! I hope you'll like this. You wanted texting and getting to know each other through texts which this is. I've never written that before so I'm a bit nervous but I hope you'll like this <3
> 
> As always, thanks to Beth for the beta!
> 
> Title is from Kina Grannis' In Your Arms

It’s supposed to be Stiles and Lydia’s vacation, because let’s face it, both Lydia and Stiles are way too dependent on their respective best friend so when Scott and Allison went on their honeymoon, Lydia grabbed Stiles and basically forced him to go with her to Los Angeles. Not that he really needed to be forced. It should’ve been awesome, just Stiles and Lydia, going to museums and sightseeing and doing things they like without having to worry about Scott and Allison getting bored.

Instead Stiles is sitting in one of the chairs on the balcony of their hotel room while Lydia is lying on her back on one of the beds, staring at her phone.

It’s the second day in LA and they haven’t done anything. Or well, they have, they went down Sunset Boulevard today and it was kind of awesome. Would have been even better if Lydia would have looked up from her phone even once, but no, she had her green eyes glued to the screen, her manicured fingers rapidly typing message after message after freaking message. She’d only looked up once when they’d been on the boulevard, but it didn’t really count because it had only been to take a selfie that she sent away to the person who’s _ruining_ Stiles’ vacation. It’s not that Stiles isn’t happy for Lydia for finding someone who seems to be more than just good-looking – an improvement from Lydia’s last few boyfriends – because he really is happy for her. It doesn’t make him feel less lonely and less of a failure though, the fact that all his friends have someone when he does not.

“Are you done soon?” Stiles calls out to her. They’re supposed to go out to eat and he’s waiting for her to get ready. Getting ready – yeah right.

“Shut up,” Lydia calls back and Stiles sighs, resigning himself to order room service. Again.

He waits for another ten minutes, trying to beat his previous score on some stupid, addicting game on his phone. He’s not even addicted to it anymore. Or he wasn’t before this stupid trip.

“Lydia!” he calls and his phone buzzes then. It’s from Lydia.

“Are you seriously texting me? I’m in the next room!”

“It’s Cora’s brother’s number. He’s also complaining. You can complain together.”

“I’m not complaining,” Stiles complains. “At least not without reason.”

A huff is all the answer he gets from inside. He looks down on his phone and thinks why the hell not? It can’t get much worse, right? He types a quick, first text.

 

 **Stiles:** Hi. I’m Stiles. I’m Lydia’s friend. She gave me your no.

 **Stiles** : Lydia’s been talking to your sister.

 **Stiles** : Your sister Cora.

 

God, Stiles is such a noob. The other guy is going to realize this in no time.

 

 **Brother** **of Cora:** I know who my sister is.

 **Brother of Cora:** Who are you?

 

Stiles rolls his eyes at the text, it does seem rather annoyed.

 

 **Stiles** : Stiles! I told you.

 

 **Brother of Cora** : What kind of name is Stiles?

 

Well, that’s just rude!

 

 **Stiles** : It’s a nickname. My real name is a monstrosity that should never have seen the light of day.

 

 **Brother of Cora:** …

 **Brother of Cora:** You do know that names can’t actually see, right?

 

And there Stiles goes making a fool out of himself. He considers smacking his head into the wall. Or throwing his phone over the balcony rail. But that would rid him of his only source of entertainment so he decides against it. And he doesn’t want his father to get the call that his son has gotten a head injury from bashing his head into a wall. While being completely sober.

**Stiles** : It’s a figure of speech, dude.

 

 **Brother of Cora:** Don’t call me dude.

 

 **Stiles** : What do you want me to call you, then?

 **Stiles** : Right now you’re called Brother of Cora in my phone. Do you have any better suggestions?

 

 **Brother of Cora:** Most people just call me Derek.

 

Stiles smiles at his phone. Even if Derek does seem annoyed with him, at least he hasn’t stopped writing to Stiles. He could do that, just ignore Stiles, but he hasn’t. So Stiles will keep on writing.

 

 **Stiles** : Derek, I’m bored.

 

 **Derek** : What do you want me to do about it?

 

Derek’s reply is quick, so Stiles suspects he might be sitting with his phone too.

 

 **Stiles** : Tell me something funny!

 

 **Derek** : Do you know how the turkey smells?

 

 **Stiles** : No?

 

 **Derek** : With its beak

 

Stiles can’t help himself. He laughs out loud at that one. He then masks his face to bored indifference, takes a picture of himself, looking all bored, and sends it off to Derek. It’s what he’d do to Scott or Lydia or even Isaac, so he tells himself it’s okay. He’s still nervous though. Stiles doesn’t get an immediate reply and he wants to bang his head into the wall. Again. Why did he send a selfie, showing off his stupid, ugly face? Couldn’t he just have replied with words like a normal human being?

 

 **Derek** : You’re a guy.

 

The reply comes almost three minutes after Stiles sent the selfie and Stiles has no idea what it even means.

 

 **Derek** : I thought you were a girl.

 

Right. Stiles glares at the phone. Derek only talked to him because he thought Stiles was a girl. He probably hoped that Stiles was going to send him nudes or something. Stiles puts his phone in his pocket and stands up.

“Come on, Lydia, I’m going to find some Chinese, with or without you.”

“You’d get lost without me,” Lydia says and finally – _finally!_ – looks up from her phone and gets up from her bed.

They link arms outside the hotel room and Lydia isn’t even holding her phone in her hand.

“Did you two get into a fight?” Stiles asks.

Lydia glares at him.

“Of course not, Cora had to deal with her freak of a brother.”

“Why? What’s wrong with him?”

Was Stiles really that bad that Derek had to get his sister to calm him down?

“He thought you were a girl,” Lydia states and tries to steer them to a sushi place. Stiles is stronger though, so he refuses to budge.

“I said _Chinese_ , not Japanese,” he tells her and she rolls her eyes but lets him guide her past the sushi place.

“He freaked out when you were a guy,” Lydia continues.

“No shit.”

Lydia sighs and rolls her eyes. She does that a lot around Stiles. Stiles is glad he’s over her, what if they’d gotten kids together? Those kids would be in a constant state of rolling their eyes at others due to their genes.

“He freaked out because you were a _cute_ guy,” Lydia smirks and keeps walking even though Stiles stops and lets go of her arm to flail.

“Lydia, why-? How-?”

“How he can think that? I have no idea,” she smirks over her shoulder and Stiles almost falls to the ground when he gets tangled up with the leash of a poodle when he tries to hurry up to her side again.

“Sorry, sorry,” he tells the dog lady – and her dog – as he manages to detangle himself and then hurries up to catch Lydia’s arm.

“He said I was cute?”

Lydia shrugs.

“Cora said he thought so. She wouldn’t lie, would she?”

“Unless she wants to humiliate me,” Stiles says and Lydia bites her lips on a smile.

“Yeah, maybe.”

They end up at a Chinese place at last and for the first time Lydia only glances at her phone a few times, the rest of the time she’s talking to Stiles. Stiles feels his phone buzz in his pocket but he refuses to check, he hopes it’s from Derek but it’s probably from Scott – their codependency kind of goes both ways.

When they get back and into bed, Stiles picks up his phone, having forgotten about Derek the last few hours. Surprisingly, there’s five texts waiting for him. Only one of them is from Scott though, telling Stiles what he and Allison have been doing today and asking how Stiles and Lydia are doing – it’s totally Allison wanting to know, too, Stiles knows this. He quickly types out an answer before opening the other conversation, the one he’s had with Derek. Derek’s sent him four texts.

 

 **Derek:** I didn’t mean it as a bad thing.

 **Derek** : You being a guy, I mean.

 **Derek** : Stiles?

 **Derek** : Right. I get it. Sorry to have bothered you.

 

What’s with the martyr thing? Stiles can’t help but smile though.

 

 **Stiles** : Dude, I was away for a few hours. You depend too much on me already!

 

The reply is immediate, making Stiles grin larger in the dark.

 

 **Derek** : What can I say? I’m a codependent guy.

 

Stiles snorts at that.

 

 **Derek** : What are you doing?

 

 **Stiles** : I’m lying in bed, about to sleep.

 

 **Derek** : What else would you be doing in bed?

 

“Oh, my god!” Stiles breathes out quietly at the phone, laughing breathlessly.

“Shut up,” Lydia says even though she’s awake and typing away on her own phone.

“Derek just asked what I was doing in bed,” Stiles whispers at her. He doesn’t know why he whispers. It’s probably from growing up and staying up late with Scott, knowing they should be sleeping but were talking anyway.

“What?” Lydia sits up to lean on her elbows, looking amused.

“Not like that, he’s just-”

Stiles’ phone buzzes in his hand.

 

 **Derek** : Forget what I just said.

 

“He didn’t mean it like that,” he defends Derek. Lydia waggles her eyebrows.

“I’m sure he didn’t,” she leers and lies back down to go back to her own phone again. Stiles’ phone buzzes again.

 

 **Derek** : Please.

 **Derek** : Stiles? I didn’t mean it like a come on or anything.

 **Derek** : It’s not that I want you to send pictures of yourself in bed or something.

 

Stiles smiles at the phone and readies himself to calm Derek down. He gets another text before that though. This one makes his heart stutter and his cheeks grow hot.

 

 **Derek** : Not that I’d mind getting pictures of you in bed…

 

He turns on the bed lamp and lies down again, turning on the camera. This time, he smiles as he takes the picture. He sends it before he can change his mind.

“You do know that Cora’s the one who wrote that last part?” Lydia says with a laugh.

“What? Fuck!”

There’s no way to retract a sent message, Stiles knows this. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t try by pleading at his phone. Lydia snorts at him.

 

 **Stiles** : Sorry. That wasn’t meant to be sent to you.

 

 **Derek** : So you just send half-naked pictures to everyone?

 

 **Stiles** : I could’ve sent it to my boyfriend or girlfriend or something.

 

 **Derek** : You don’t have one.

 

Stiles makes an affronted sound and Lydia snorts at him.

 

 **Stiles** : I could totally have one. I’m a stud!

 

 **Derek** : Sure you are.

 **Derek** : Cora told me you’re single. And then she sent that message.

 **Derek** : Not that it’s not true though.

 

 **Stiles** : What?

 

 **Derek** : Cora sent that last one.

 

 **Stiles** : Dude, you need to stop letting your sister use your phone.

 

 **Derek** : She stole it.

 

Stiles snorts. He can almost hear Derek’s grumpy tone. Well, he doesn’t really _know_ how Derek sounds but he can imagine.

Great, now he’s fantasizing about someone he doesn’t even know.

 

 **Stiles** : It wasn’t a half-naked picture, btw.

 

 **Derek** : It was. Your nipple was showing.

 

Stiles scrolls up to the picture and click on it to enlarge it. His chest is mostly covered by his sheet. Except that Derek is right, his left nipple is showing, just over the edge of the sheet, shadowed by Stiles’ arm.

Derek must’ve looked at him for quite some time to see that.

 

 **Derek** : Sorry.

 

 **Stiles** : What for? It’s not your fault I’m such a handsome, young man that you can’t help but ogle.

 

Stiles wonders if he’s taken it too far. Derek takes a bit longer to reply this time so Stiles is making distressed noises until Lydia tells him to shut up or she’ll shove a pillow into his mouth. Stiles doesn’t doubt her. She probably wouldn’t actually manage to shove a pillow into his mouth, but that doesn’t mean she wouldn’t try. Derek replies after almost a minute though.

 

 **Derek** : you’re right. It’s not your fault.

 

Did he just…?

“Lydia, I think Derek-”

“I don’t care,” Lydia snaps at him. “God, you’re annoying.”

Stiles stares at his phone, Lydia’s words barely even register because Derek just admitted that he’d ogled Stiles’ bod and that he _liked_ it. Stiles decides to be brave.

 

 **Stiles** : You’ve seen me now. I’d say you have an advantage over me.

  
 **Derek** : Yeah. We can’t have that, can we?

 

Stiles waits for almost two minutes, wondering if he should reply and _how_ he should reply but then his phone buzzes with a new text. A picture.

“Fuck,” he breathes, then throwing a scared glance at Lydia, who ignores him.

Derek’s hot. Gorgeous. Greek god. He’s got dark hair that is slightly tousled and sharp cheekbones and a jawline covered in perfect stubble. His eyes though… His eyes are the most beautiful, perfect eyes Stiles has ever seen. He can’t tell what color they are, they might be brown or blue or green or gray. Probably all of the above and a few more. And then there’s pecs with hair between them and dark-pink nipples – both nipples on display actually. Derek has a lazy, but also kind of nervous, smile.

 

 **Stiles** : You’re gorgeous.

 

He took it too far, didn’t he?

 

 **Derek** : So are you.

 

Stiles turns his head and squeals into his pillow.

“You do know that I can still hear you, right?” Lydia says from the bed next to his.

“Sorry.”

He’s not sorry at all.

“Cora says Derek’s smiling at his phone,” Lydia informs him. “He looks deranged.”

“I doubt that,” Stiles says and smiles at the picture of Derek.

 

 **Stiles** : I’m going to try to get some sleep.

 **Stiles** : Talk to you tomorrow?

 

 **Derek** : Yeah. Sweet dreams.

 

 **Stiles** : I’ll probably be dreaming about you.

 **Stiles** : So yeah, they will be.

 **Stiles** : Good night.

 

 **Derek** : I’ll be dreaming sweetly about you too.

 **Derek** : Good night.

 

~*~*~

 

The next week is the best vacation Stiles has ever been on. He talks with Derek a lot. Like, _a lot_. Lydia doesn’t complain though because she talks with Cora as well. They also talk to each other now. They go to all the tourist stuff and take selfies, both together and at themselves, almost everywhere they go and send them off to their respective Hale sibling.

“What would you say about stopping in San Francisco on the way back?” Lydia asks. They’re going back home tomorrow. Or, are supposed to at least.

“Derek lives in San Francisco,” Stiles replies dumbly.

Lydia rolls her eyes.

“I know,” she says.

“I don’t know if Derek would want to-”

“Are you kidding me?” Lydia says. “Cora says he’s walking around with this goofy smile all the time.  It freaks her out, he usually never smiles.”

“He smiles at me,” Stiles says because just this morning Derek sent him a picture of him barely even awake, holding up a coffee cup while smiling softly.

“She says he’s been talking about wanting to meet you.”

Stiles can’t fight back the smile from his face.

“I guess we’re going to San Francisco then.”

Lydia beams at him – actually beams, which Stiles isn’t sure he’s ever seen her do. He makes to pick up his phone to text Derek about them coming, but Lydia puts her hand on his arm, stopping him.

“Let’s surprise him instead.”

“Are you sure?”

She smiles and nods.

“Okay, yeah, we’ll surprise him.”

 

~*~*~ 

 

Stiles is so nervous he’s almost shaking when they make their way out of the plane and to the pick-up area of the airport.

“Relax, it’ll be fine,” Lydia says and takes his hand. Her voice is shaking and it’s quite obvious that she’s nervous too. At least she and Cora have been talking for some months, not just barely two weeks, even if they've never met each other in person before.

Stiles sees them first. And _dear lord!_ Derek is wearing tight jeans and a gray Henley. He’s scowling at his sister – Stiles recognizes her from the pictures Lydia has shown him. She has her brown hair tied back and looks excited and nervous.

“There,” Stiles hisses and feels Lydia tensing beside him when she sees them.

“Well, come on,” she says and tugs Stiles towards the Hales.

They get closer and neither of the siblings has seen them yet. Stiles thinks he might be sweating through every pore of his entire body. Way to feel attractive when he’s meeting the man he’s been crushing on for the first time.  Cora sees them first, Stiles sees the change immediately, how her whole face lights up.

“I still don’t understand why I had to come with you,” Derek says to Cora, ignorant of the fact that Cora’s attention is on Lydia. “Just so you can make out with your girlfriend in the back of the car. Couldn’t you just wait till you get-?”

Derek tenses and his mouth fall open as he stares at Stiles. They stop a few feet in front of the Hales and Lydia lets go of his hand, drops her bag, and hugs Cora. Stiles only sees this in his periphery, his attention focused on Derek who stares at him.

“Stiles?” Derek asks, his eyes drop down across Stiles’ body.

Oh, fuck, this is where he realizes what a complete nerd and not-at-all-gorgeous person Stiles is.

“Surprise,” Stiles says weakly, throwing out his hands from his sides and then lets them fall limply to his side.

“What are you doing here? I mean, how…?”

Stiles swallows and he feels his eyes burn. Please, don’t let him cry before he’s by himself in a bathroom. Or at least away from Derek’s gorgeous eyes.

“Stiles,” Derek says again. More exhales really. The next moment he has a warm, hard body against his front, warm, strong arms around his waist. Derek smells absolutely amazing and feels both soft and hard at the same time. Stiles lets out a shaky exhale and winds his arms around Derek’s neck. Derek kisses his cheek then and when they lean back slightly to meet each other’s eyes, Derek smiles at him. Stiles smiles back, sniffling and laughing. Then he leans in and kisses Derek for the first time. It won’t be the last though, he’s sure of it.


End file.
